Woke up this morning to find that the Arcadia was docked in Zeebrugge, Belgium. Trevor and I worked out that it was nearly 10 years (December 2007) since we’d last visited this port, which is the gateway to the medieval city of Bruges. On that day, it was bitterly cold with an icy wind blowing,…
Woke up at 8.00am after an excellent night’s sleep. I’d been wearing some industrial-strength earplugs while I slept so nothing disturbed me at all, and I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed when I got out of bed, despite the fact that we’d had to put our watches forward an hour to European time. Looking outside, the…
Well, it might seem strange to be writing about cruising so soon after our last one, but it seemed to be a long time until our next cruise, so we decided to squeeze in a mini-cruise of three days on board the P&O ship Arcadia, a beautiful vessel on which we’ve cruised three times previously…
We were up bright and early this morning, dressed and packed up and along to breakfast before getting our hand-luggage (our cases had already been collected from outside our door in the early hours of the morning) and going along to the Globe lounge to await our call to disembark. Then down the gangplank we…
When we woke up around 7.45 this morning, the Arcadia was already docked in Montevideo, on the Rio de la Plata (River Plate). We went out onto our balcony for our first glimpse of Uruguay, our 71st country visited. After breakfast we assembled at 8.45am in the Palladium for our shore excursion, the Montevideo city tour….
Sunday, 20th January 2013 Crossing the Tropic of Capricorn at 23° 27′ south in the early hours of this morning, Arcadia left the warmer waters of the tropics on her passage towards Uruguay. Today and tomorrow would see our last two sea days before our arrival in Montevideo. We enjoyed a bit of a lie-in this morning and…
When we woke up this morning the Arcadia was just about to dock in the port of Rio de Janeiro, bustling vibrant city and former capital of Brazil. We had stayed here once before, for three days, in 2001 so we were excited to be back. With anticipation we went out onto the balcony to see…
Today we had another full day at sea to look forward to. People who read this blog sometimes say to me, “But you always seem to do the same stuff on sea days – don’t you get bored?”. I wouldn’t say we always do the same thing, but like everyday life, we tend to fall…
This morning we watched from our balcony as the Arcadia slowly pulled into her berth in the port of Salvador da Bahia, ancient former capital of Brazil. We had had a fantastic holiday here in 2001, when we stayed at the beach resort of Costa do Sauípe, so we were looking forward to exploring the old…
When we woke up at 8.00am this morning and turned on the TV to catch the morning Sky news, we were shocked to learn that, in London’s grey and very foggy skies, a helicopter had crashed into a crane in the centre of the city near Vauxhall Bridge, killing the pilot and at least one…
